'Stories We Tell' director dredges up secrets in project about mother

Thursday

Jul 11, 2013 at 12:01 AMJul 11, 2013 at 6:28 PM

The truth is simple. Or is it? Canadian actor and director Sarah Polley examines how people filter their perceptions about events in Stories We Tell, a documentary opening Friday at the Gateway Film Center.

Terry Mikesell, The Columbus Dispatch

The truth is simple. Or is it?

Canadian actor and director Sarah Polley examines how people filter their perceptions about events in Stories We Tell, a documentary opening Friday at the Gateway Film Center.

The film is screening as part of Documentary Week at the Gateway.

“I think that it’s hard to get at the black-and-white truth of what happened in the past,” Polley, 34, said in an interview with The Dispatch.

So she looked at how people perceived her mother, Diane — who died of cancer in 1990 at age 54, two days after Sarah’s 11th birthday — and, in the process, revealed the bombshell secrets of her past.

A native of Toronto, Sarah Polley became an actress at an early age, gaining the title role in the Canadian TV series Ramona and a plum part in the 1988 movie The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. But, before Sarah came along, Diane was a free-spirited, married actress who fell in love with Michael Polley — or, more accurately, he says in the movie, with characters he was playing onstage.

Their affair led to her devastating 1967 divorce that cost her the custody of her first two children and made headlines in Canada. Soon after, she and Michael were married.

But their marriage and home life in Toronto weren’t idyllic. Michael was as reserved as Diane was outgoing, and in 1979, when she was offered a part in a play in Montreal, they were both enthusiastic about her accepting the role.

Michael visited her several times in Montreal, and their reunions brought a spark back to their marriage.

Nine months later, Sarah was born.

Polley became interested in the project when she would hear family members and her parents’ friends recall events and notice differences in their stories.

“The events themselves that happened, I wasn’t really interested in them,” she said, “but watching how we were talking about the stories really fascinated me. .?.?. People would include different parts of the past in the stories they told.”

So she gathered her father, Michael; her four siblings; and her mother’s friends and colleagues to record their recollections about her mother.

“For some of them, it was a long, hard process to dredge this up,” she said. “I was lucky they were candid and open. I’m sure it wasn’t the easiest experience for them.”

Without spoiling the surprises — both personally for Polley and cinematically — the film lets audience members walk in her footsteps.

“I wanted to give the audience a parallel experience to my experience,” she said, “when I was wading through these versions of the same story.”

Polley has called the project the most difficult she has ever tackled.

“It was so intensely claustrophobic,” she said. “To think about my own family and my own life and not be able to escape that was really overwhelming.”

Several people in the film raise concerns that, in her search for the truth, she would filter the movie through her perspective during the editing process.

“I think that’s true,” she said, “and I think that’s part of why I leave my own version out, because I was able to construct, in a way, their stories. I thought it would be oppressive to have my own version as well.”

Polley won’t be at the Columbus screening, but she takes great satisfaction in overhearing audience members discuss their families as they leave the theater.

“For me,” she said, “that’s a hugely exciting thing.”

tmikesel@dispatch.com

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